since it appears that a blog mentioned here previously that seemed to have the sole intent of spreading half-truths and outright lies about 1 particular candidate for school board has gone dark, apparently permanently.  I guess they feel they accomplished their mission.

But I have to ask, if their mission was to inform the public, why the need to disappear so quickly?  If you are making claims based on facts, why hide your identities? Hopefully the site was obscure enough that it really was not a factor in how people voted.

I wouldn’t want to think that this community would base its vote on a nameless, faceless entity that is intent on slander.  But then again they reelected a member who feels that quacking is appropriate behavior during a board meeting…

It really is a sad situation in our community…

Interestingly enough, the comments on another blog that I discussed in my previous post seem to have sparked additional interest in my sleepy little blog.  It seems that posting anonymously to try to smoke out someone’s true identity is now being equated with some no-name person out there taking pot-shots at people they don’t like.  I don’t know about you, but if I’m going to take someone’s opinion seriously, I’d like to know who they are and what their motives are before blindly following along.  Yes, I played the anonymous game but only in search of answers.  When I didn’t get any answers, I revealed myself.

Yes, I am a two-time former BOE candidate and lost both times.  Some have called me a two-time loser.  I’m not ashamed of that.  I learned a lot about this town, its people and its schools and had the joy of meeting lots of good people and making many new friends by running for the Board.  It’s probably a good thing that I wasn’t elected because my current job as a corporate accountant would not allow me the time to do right by the community if I were on the school board.  My mom always said that things have a way of working out the way that they’re supposed to.  I know in this case that is a fact.

But if the occupation of your school board members matters to you, let’s look at our 5 current members.  Only 1 of the 5 is employed full-time outside of the home.  2 of the 5 have experience in an educational setting.  None of the 5 has any type of financial background.  4 of the 5 have children in the schools, and 3 of the 5 come from an area that represents 10% of the voters in the school district.  The voters have to decide what out of all those facts are important to them.

If you’re going to listen to a tape of a meeting that took place almost a year ago, you should be listening to audio of all meetings.  If you took the time, you would find examples of all 5 members acting unprofessionally and irresponsibly.  It’s easy to cherry-pick inopportune moments out if you’re looking for them.

You should check the roll call over the past 3 years and see who has actually made an effort to show up to most of the meetings.  If you look at the origins of the BOE members and look at the transparency of some of the “anonymous” comments ( i.e. Floraga, I hear the Gators are doing well these days, or PrincessPeach, need I say more) on the blogs over the past few years, you would see that no hands are clean here. 

The visitor logs of my blog clearly indicate that the top 2 visitors to my blog are a business and a residence located in a city (not in Ohio) well known to one of our BOE members because they have a very close relative who lives there.  But that’s the risk you run when you put yourself out there on the Internet.  I knew that when I started this blog.  Having a family member stalk someone you don’t agree with is the risk you run as a public official.  I don’t know if mental illness runs in families but it makes me wonder.

Ultimately the voters will decide: do you want to elect someone who is willing to put their thoughts, feelings and opinions out there with their name behind them?  Or, do you want to be led around by the nose by the stranger hiding behind the curtain?  I’m not afraid of the stranger behind the curtain because eventually the Yellow Brick Road will lead to the truth.  But me, I’d rather follow the words of someone who isn’t afraid to put their name behind it and get to the truth that much faster. 

But in the end, it’s in the hands of the voters.  What is really important to them?

Screenshot - 10/24/09

Originally uploaded by mollybenedum
If you keep up on the blogs related to the Cuyahoga Falls School Board or read comments on the Falls News Press site, you are no doubt aware of the dummiesforboe blog that has popped up recently.

What you may not be aware of is that the owner(s) of the blog have had their site taken down once for making personal attacks and now have to prove that the attacks that they post on the site as fact. And they have posted on the site as fact that no one involved with it is a candidate for the BOE. But when challenged in a comment to prove that the site isn’t being run by a candidate, the comment with the question does not get posted to the site (see the screenshot to see the comments awaiting moderation or click here for a larger view).

To see a full screen with the site address and time/date, click here.

That’s right, the owners of dummiesforboe are moderating their comments. What a great way to control the spin of your message. No public discourse and exchange of ideas going on over there.

And yes for the record, I am “Disappointed,” both the screen name and in the people involved in this election. Seems there’s been very little personal growth in the personalities involved over the past 4 years. And more than likely these people are running our school district.

How much lower can we go?

edited 10/24/2009 5:28pm - I should also mention that any group of people that actively campaign against a political candidate or issue is considered a Political Action Committee (or PAC) and are required to register with the Board of Elections.  They also must provide contact information in that registration.  Since the dummiesforboe blog refers to themselves alternatively as “I” and “we,” they may be in violation of election law. 

 Also if any candidate or elected official is involved in campaigning against a candidate or issue, they would be required to publically declare their involvement and offer proof of their allegations. 

Neither of the above situations would be protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.  If the person(s) is (are) not a BOE member or candidate for the BOE, I would have to wonder why the need to hide their identity.  Proof of the ownership of that blog could become an issue if a complaint is filed with the Board of Elections which it may well be very soon.

Congratulation to the Cuyahoga Falls City School District for achieving an excellent rating  on the state report cards.  If only it meant the same thing now as it did 4 years ago when they set out on this quest.  Unfortunately, in the interim, the State has watered down the requirements to achieve an excellent rating.  Also, as the rating that Woodridge achieved will attest to, there is an additional level that was added at the top of the scale, Excellent with Distinction.  So basically, districts that were top-notch before have once again been pushed into their own category apart from the above-average.  And this left room for districts that walk the border between average and above-average to be pushed into the Excellent category.

Another question that was posed about these ratings by my 8th-grader is: How does a school district rank Excellent when all of their elementary schools (and more than half of their buildings) are only ranked Effective?  If your basic education in a district, grades K-5, is only Efffective, how does it become Excellent in the upper grades?  Since the overall “grade” is determined at the State level, I can only guess that there is something fundamentally wrong with the state report cards themselves because the numbers and facts just don’t add up.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that the students and teachers have worked very hard for this.  The problem is that I don’t think it accurately reflects what is happening in the buildings on a day-to-day basis.  What I know about this district and its students would lead me to think that more of the elementary buildings should be in the Excellent category, but I don’t think the high school is quite there yet.  I know of too many students that are just scraping by or that the system has lost all together.  Too me, any student that drops out is the mark of a failed school.  The State may not think so but I do.

In other news, the Board decided not to give raises to its two top employees.  And guess what?  A majority of the Board is up for reelection this Fall.  Coincidence?  I think not…

I have to say that I’m very impressed by some recent letters to the Falls News-Press.  The most recent letter asked many questions, all excellent but many of which I cannot even begin to try to answer.  Believe it or not, I thought the most important of Mr. Halpin’s questions was, “Isn’t now the time to make the hard decisions and garner the savings they could generate rather than asking an already reeling electorate to pass additional levies, which is doubtful, or cutting the services offered to our children?”  What a polite way to say to the Board and administration, “Hey, wake up and smell the coffee…”

Another excellent letter was written by the mother of a friend of one of my daughters’.  In her letter she basically says (and I am taking liberties here because I haven’t spoken with her about her letter or intent), this community cannot afford to keep giving you more but you (the district) should find a way to make it work without cutting our childrens’ programs.

My perspective is: how can you promise to do what’s best for our children when, at the first sign of hardship, your knee-jerk reaction is to cut programs that directly affect our kids?  Did you even stop to ask the employees of the district what they might be willing to give up to keep the current level of services?  What are you, yourself, willing to give up to not have to ask your constituents for more money?  And here’s the biggie: are you willing to look honestly and fairly (and allow it to be analyzed by an uninterested party such as the State Auditor) any proposal that may save the district money?

And so as to not dance around the issue anymore, are the voters of the City of Cuyahoga Falls going to start taking a serious look at how their tax dollars are spent?  My personal opinion is that I want my tax dollars used equitably across the district for all of the students whose families pay taxes here.  I understand that certain students may have greater needs, but I don’t think that “need” extends to “average” students whose families do not pay taxes to our district or to those who have the luck to live in neighborhoods that feed to or are open-enrolled to a school that spends more per pupil.

And yes, when you boil it down, Mr. Halpin had the basics of it right.  I’m going to paraphrase here, but, “Is the majority of this school board willing to cut student programs instead of consolidating buildings to save money?”  And here’s a little question of my own to the homeowners, “can you realistically expect your home value to grow in a community that would rather short-change its students than find other ways to save money?”

Yes, the heart of the matter is: did the richest neighborhood in our district spend a helluva lot of money to get a majority on the board that would protect (i.e. make  it ‘untouchable’) their building?  Did they do that at the expense of all the other students and the majority of the taxpayers?

But the most important questions of all are: how hard are voters willing to dig to get the answers to so many questions?  Are voters going to take the campaign promises this year at face value or are they going to look at the voting records and behavioral standards set over the last 4 years?  What kind of community and school district do we want to be in 5 years?

I’ve already stated that Cuyahoga Falls is no longer a community that I believe offers what I want for my family, as much as it saddens me to say so.  My feeling is that a big part of the problem is voter apathy.  Do the voters really pay attention?  Do the large proportion of renters make a levy a guaranteed win?  More questions but no answers.